There are several terrain paint in-game that I would love to use in my neighborhood. Will I have to take apart/scan the game files to get these into CaW manually or is there a way for CaW to read them from the game? The selection available in the tool is awful. I wanted to use the actual terrain paints I use building lots to make the world and lots blend together better.

Thanks for the help! I have searched, but could not find the answer (I know it might be my fault for not entering the right word combination sorry)

You can extract the texture resource of existing terrain paints using S3PE, and then import them into CAW. AFAIK that's the only way to do it. It would be a bit time-consuming if you want to do a lot of paints, but it's not difficult.

Probably the easiest way to find what you want is to use S3OC to choose the terrain paint file you want, because it has a visual browser for all the game's resources. Make a clone of the terrain paint and save it as a .package. Use S3PE to open the package, find the image resource you want, and export it. That will save it to disk in a graphics file format (.dds, IIRC).

I'd give you step by step instructions, but I don't have current versions of those programs atm. Give me a bit and I'll update and write up a mini-tut :p

BTW, I don't guarantee that this method is the most efficient one It's just the one I'm familiar with.

Edit: OK, here goes, step by step . You'll need to download and install the latest versions of S3PE and S3OC (there was an issue with terrain paint in earlier versions, because of the categorization data added with WA, so make sure you have the latest). You'll find them here: http://www.modthesims.info/forumdisplay.php?f=604

Open S3OC.

The first time you use S3OC, you'll have to go to Settings and point it to your base game and EP install locations (Settings | Game Folders).

Select Cloning | Terrain Paintbrushes. (You can use the View menu to display Large Icons, so you can see which brushes are which.)

Click the brush you want.

Click the "Clone or Fix" button.

Click "start" (you can accept the default settings).

Save the file someplace where you'll be able to find it. That copies the terrain paint to a .package file.

When the clone is complete, click OK.

Open S3PE.

Click File | Open, and navigate to the package file you just cloned. You'll see a list of resources in the package.

Select the resource that has "_IMG" in the Tag field.

Click Resource | Export | To File, and save it someplace where you'll be able to find it. The default filename will be a confusing string of numbers and letters; you can rename it when you save it, or later, if you want. The file extension should be .dds.

Open CAW.

Open the Terrain Paint menu, and click Add Layer.

Click "..." next to "texture", and navigate to the .dds file you saved.

That's it!
You now have a new terrain paint. If you want to edit that terrain paint, or make your own, you'll need a graphics app that can open .dds files, which is a whole nother topic... there's plenty of info on it in our modding tutorial sections, though, since that file format is common to most of the game's textures.

OMG! Thank-you so very much for posting this mini tutorial. As have not used either of these programs you have made things much easier for me. I am not to worried about editing the .dds files (although I have a graphics program that will) I did want the original game textures.

At first i was all go go about making my own terrains. but then i realized that the terrain paints would not match up with any i use on my lots.

You can make your own in-game terrain paint as well... it's just a matter of cloning one of the existing terrain paints, as in the instructions above, editing the _IMG resource, and taking it back to the cloner to "make unique". Then you get a package which can be used like any other mod.

Srikandi, I followed you mini-tutorial and it was super simple and easy. It only took about 20 minutes (maybe not even) to get every terrain paint from the base game and WA exported and converted to .dds files.

Ashillion, one of the reasons I am wanting to use in-game terrain paints is exactly what you are saying. I do not want my world to cause people to have to download tons of cc that may or maynot work after the next patch, much less after the next ep.

Now that I have the dds files I want I am having a problem getting the roads and sidewalks to look decent. Right now they look awful. I want dark dirt roads and cobbled style sidewalk and the sidewalks are not looking correct at all. At least the dirt road looks cute

There's opacity control images for the custom roads and sidewalks that let you do fuzzy edges and whatnot - I wonder if it's not possible to set them to completely transparent to make an invisible road/sidewalk, and then just use the regular terrain painting to make it look nice and realistic.

I'm sorry, I've read through all sorts of things and still can't manage to create new in-game (not CAW) textures.

Srikandi, I can't seem to succeed "editing the _IMG resource, and taking it back to the cloner to "make unique". Then you get a package which can be used like any other mod." I didn't ever find anything that said _IMG; I tried to replace the .dds file with the one I made for CAW but failed miserably. Is there any way you could walk me through it the way you would a total idiot? :/